1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to telecommunication systems and, more particularly, to a system and method of automatically populating a group's Private Numbering Plan (PNP) subscription with the group members' data.
2. Description of Related Art
In existing telecommunication systems, all Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN) services are provisioned manually utilizing service management application software. One such service is the Private Numbering Plan (PNP). PNP is similar to Private Branch Exchange (PBX) dialing in wireline networks, but applies to a group of mobile subscribers in a cellular network. For Business Group subscriptions to the PNP service, manual provisioning includes the time consuming re-entry of all the group members' numbers followed by their associated abbreviated numbers, which may number in the thousands. Currently, to add a group, a data entry operator must enter an identifier for the group, enter a group name and address, create a group subscription, enter a list of subscriptions that belong to the group, add the members to the group, and then add an abbreviated number to the database for each member. This is a burdensome data entry task for system operators.
There are no known prior art teachings of a solution to the aforementioned deficiency and shortcoming such as that disclosed herein.
In order to overcome the disadvantage of existing solutions, it would be advantageous to have a method of automatically populating a group's PNP subscription with the group members' data at the time that the group members are defined. The present invention provides such a method.